


Pictures of You

by Hernicyt



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt, Feels, Hurt, I felt sad so I dragged Sniper with me, I'm a terrible person, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-05 02:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20481170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hernicyt/pseuds/Hernicyt
Summary: Sniper looks through some photos and can't help but feel overwhelmed by the emotions they are causing. He can't stand the fact that he's longing for something he thinks he'll never have, with someone he feels a little too close to.





	Pictures of You

He’s been looking at him for so long.

Sniper sat at the kitchen table, completely lost in his thoughts. His coffee slowly turned cold, which made a total of three wasted drinks this morning. But he didn’t really care.  
He sighed and put down a couple of Polaroid pictures he gathered over the years of living in the base. He kept putting them back and forth, spending a little time on each of them, as if he was analyzing an ancient manuscript. But after a while, he has had enough. He tried drinking the coffee but it was already ruined.  
\- Aw bugger - he murmured to himself, as he stood up and poured the contents of his cup down the sink. He wanted to leave the room but glanced at the table right before he stepped out. The photos were lying there, waiting patiently for their owner.  
He grabbed them with one swift motion of his hand and put them in the pocket of his vest. He shivered at the sole thought of someone seeing them, or worse, taking them away. He patted his pocket carefully, to make sure they stayed in place and didn’t actually fall out. The man took a little sigh of relief that they were safely lying there, close to him, and no one he passed knew. And nobody should. And nobody will.  
As he stepped outside, the morning sun caressed his skin gently, making him crack a half-smile. He closed his eyes and stood like that for a while, with hands stuck in the pockets of his jeans and face turned towards the cloudless sky. It would be a great day for a road trip. And a great opportunity to…  
\- Lawrence, ya drongo. - Sniper shook his head to drive the thoughts away. Not in a million years would it work out and he knew it too damn well. So he just carried on, lowering his head to escape the sunshine and potential looks of the team.  
The van. His escape. His sacred place, that nobody ever came to, the place where he could scream, cry, think how much he’d like to and he felt safely hidden from the sight of the outside world. And right now he felt like screaming. He felt like screaming his lungs out, because the emotions inside him were too overwhelming to handle them, and his heart was feeling heavier with each step he took away from the base. He felt so stupid and gullible, and he owed it all to the pictures of h i m, that he created in his own imagination.  
Lawrence opened the door to his van and slammed it behind him. He climbed on the bed and threw his hat and glasses next to it. He laid there for a while, screaming into the pillow and wondering if a grown man like him should throw anger tantrums like that. He’s been in so many difficult situations, far worse from the one he’s been in now, yet they all seemed like a piece of cake compared to the feelings that were tearing him from the inside.  
Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw h i m.  
Wherever he looked, he kept thinking of h i m.  
The pictures slipped away from his pocket. Pictures of h i m.  
To be more specific, the pictures weren’t concentrated on one person. The whole team was on them, laughing, fighting, watching movies, eating together. Scout insisted one day that they should take more pictures together.

\- Ya know, for the future guys and gals! To show them how AWESOME we were! And, well… it’d be nice to have some things to remember ya guys after we go home. 

So, they did. They got a camera and, whenever someone felt like it, he took a picture. This way, they had a ton of memories from almost every free day they had. And, occasionally, one or two pictures would get lost. They all knew well that they kept taking them out of sentiment, so nobody said a word about it. And things were good.  
Sniper sat up and picked some of the pictures up. The first one was of him and Engineer, fixing the van. It was a reminder of a hot spring day, The car got hit by some bullets and he and Dell were patching it up. Lawrence bruised his fingers over one of the patches on the wall next to him. It was a good memory, a memory that made him a little calmer.  
The next picture showed the whole team standing in front of the building. They took a million of pictures like that, mostly because each got to show off their new weapon. This particular photo was one of the earliest ones. They all were standing before the main entrance to the base, Scout with patched up knees, Soldier waving a severed hand (Sniper couldn’t remember if it was Doe’s, or someone else’s) and Demoman still dirty from falling into a pile of sand. The rest looked rather normal. But he wasn’t that much interested in the condition of his teammates… he focused on one of them. The one with his face covered by a crimson balaclava.  
Spy.  
Him.  
He didn’t like him at the beginning. And he knew that the feeling was mutual. When they first got to the base, he thought that he would never share a word with that pompous Frenchie. He found his high mannerism irritating. He looked and acted like he didn’t belong to this place. And yet… yet, after some time, he stopped being irritated and angry at the man and became… curious. He always had an aura of mystery around him. The way he talked, the way he moved, the way… he was so different. Sniper laughed, but it wasn’t a sincere laugh. It was more like a cry of help. A realization of how pathetic it was. The very thing he hated the Spy for, his difference, became the reason for slowly falling for him, to the point where Sniper’s heart physically ached when they were in the same room together. Whenever they shared a late-night cigarette outside or went to the town to run errands, or even waited in the sick-bay for Medic to finish healing someone, Sniper’s feelings grew. He and Spy went from frenemies to colleagues, to friends, to…  
Well, he wanted to go beyond friends. He really did. Every moment he shared with him was incredible and comfortable and it felt… it felt like home. His voice warmed him up, his smell made him blissful, and his gaze… his gaze, especially with a tiny hint of pinot-noir behind it, it made him tremble.  
He felt like a stupid high school kid with an enormous crush. The kind of crush that makes you miserable to the point you don’t want to leave your room. And he knew that it would always be just a crush. Confessing his feelings would feel like a betrayal to his friend… best friend, Sniper dared to say.  
Because… there was someone else.  
Spy talked about her very often. He was a private man by nature, he never talked much about his life before or outside Teufort. But… he made an exception. Exception for her.  
She was, as Spy would describe it, “an angel who descended from Heaven, to bless an unworthy mortal like him”.  
At first, Sniper laughed at this description, but when he saw her picture, he understood.  
Spy was holding her like a newlywed bride and they shared a passionate kiss before the Eiffel Tower. A real cliché, probably millions of couples have similar pictures.  
But… they weren’t a regular couple.  
It was Spy. With the love of his life, he held as he would never let her go, even if it would cost him his life.  
That night, it made Sniper finish his drink quickly and go to his van, to cry and let all the anger out far from any witnesses.  
Far from him.  
Lawrence stood up and put the pictures on a shelf with two lonely, worn-out books. He brushed his cheeks, only now realizing that a couple of tears has escaped his eyes. He turned away, only to find a photo of him and Spy, pinned to a board above his small table. They were sitting in front of a bonfire, holding onto each other, half-drunk, and singing along to one of Engineer’s songs.  
He bit his lower lip and stared at it for a while, deciding if he’s ready to do what he wanted to for a long time now.  
And he did.  
He reached out for the photo and stared at it for a little longer before he put it in one of the books he never read. Even he didn’t know how it got there. Then, he took it outside, behind the van. He sat on a flat rock and held this book tight in his hands.  
\- … Guess that’s it, ya french wanker, eh? - he opened it one last time on the page where he hid the picture. He took a deep breath and closed it again, placing it on the ground. One match was enough to start a fire, that started consuming the old paper instantly.

He’s been looking at him for too long.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi ~~  
My friend said she hates me for making it painful, but hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do, am I right? x)  
Feel free to comment and make suggestions as to what write next!  
The song "Pictures of You" by the Cure inspired me to write this, maybe I'll work with their other songs too in the future, who knows.  
Thanks for reading guys!


End file.
